AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I don’t give a shit what I look like. What I do care about is the wound on my left hand that broke open again and needs binding.
A sweep of the bathing room informs me there’s nothing of use for that purpose, so I rinse the washcloth with what’s left of the clean water in the pitcher and wrap it around my palm. When I finally muster the courage to enter the bedroom, both Crow guards are waiting for me, the one by the door angling his spear at me and the one who picked me up from prison leaning against the wall across the room, bored gaze on the sunset out the window as if he’s been assigned a particularly annoying task and wishes for nothing more than to get back to whatever else he has on his schedule for the night.
I stop on the threshold as his gaze swings to me. “Not what I’d hoped for but better than before.” He doesn’t explain himself as he gestures at the door, and the Crow with the spear steps aside, pulling the paling wooden gate open.
His hiss creeps down my spine as I cross the room, fear commanding me to get moving, and put as much distance between him and me as I can manage while slipping out into the hallway.
The guard from the journey is at my heels, boots thudding lightly, unlike those of the fairy guards at the prison. I’d ask what makes Crow Fairies so different from other fairies, but my tongue is a tangle of held-back sounds of fear and pain, and I am truly not ready for another piece of bad news tonight.
There’s a banister running around the inside of the huge space, blocking out the view on the lower levels. Several doors line the walls between columns of gray stone, and I notice carvings on them—feathers and antlers and ferns, all woven together into intricate patterns climbing the length of the stone pillars.
“This way.” The guard catches up with me as I stop on the landing of a wide staircase, and holds out a wing, pointing down the stairs.
He walks beside me as if he isn’t something born of nightmares, as talkative as he was on the transfer from the prison—until he poisoned me and put me into a magical slumber.
“Where are we going?” I can’t hold my breath for the rest of the path, so I allow my questions to break free, one at a time.
“The dining room,” the Crow answers, eyes on what has to be the entrance hall at the bottom of the stairs. “King Myron is expecting you there.”
Myron.I search my memory for anything I might have heard about a King with that name and come up blank. The history of Askarea isn’t written in human books, and the merchants who try to procure fairy books rarely ever get their hands on anything useful. Fairy poems, perhaps songbooks. Even ancient magic books which humans, supposedly, once used to study magic so they had something to pit against fairies.
But that was all in the past. Askarea was open for trade, and the diplomatic relations between King Recienne and Cezux are good enough. Tavras has closed itself off over the past decades, though, even from our human neighbors in the west. That leaves all things fairy that aren’t goods on a merchant ship fables and rumors and stories to scare children into submission. I don’t know even half as much as I want to about fairies. Only that the prison guards looked almost human, only taller, more perfect, and had pointed ears. I didn’t know what other sorts of fairies existed in Askarea. Perhaps there were the hoofed sort and the horned one the way some tales told; perhaps those were just that—stories.
However, the Crow beside me is real, and so is his king. With his own kingdom as he’d said.
Before I can ask him if dinner is all that is expected of me, we arrive at a tall, carved door framed by two more Crow guards, both in the same leather pants and feathers as the one in my room. They even have the same type of spear. Their faces have more bird features than human ones, and my stomach forgets it is hungry as they click their beaks and caw what sounds like a greeting.
I swallow hard to free my vocal cords, but no sound comes out as they pull open the door, letting us into a large dining room made of the same dark stone as the room where I woke up. At the center, a long table is set with a white tablecloth and gray cloth napkins. The silverware and crystal goblet at the end of the table inform me on which of the eleven empty chairs I will sit.
King Myron sits in the twelfth, his feathered arms angled so his hands are resting in front of him on the table, and he is looking at me with those all-black eyes like I’m a bug under his boot.
“Nice of you to join me.” He doesn’t sound like he means it, even when his mouth curves up under his beak. I wonder if he can eat through both of them, or if the beak serves as a nose only.
Before I can make up my mind, he angles his head at me, gesturing at the chair across from him at the other end of the table. I’m not upset that there are five seats on each side, separating us. If anything, I can’t get enough space between us.
As if reading my mind, the Crow King crooks a brow and leans back in his chair. He lifts a hand, waving it at the Crow who escorted me to this room. “Leave us alone, Royad.”
Royad, apparently, inclines his head and—with a quick glance at me—hurries from the room, feathers quivering on his back as he marches out the door.
My nausea from earlier is gone, replaced by a chest-tightening panic that makes me go rigid in my chair.
The sunset kisses the silver on the table, the reflections taking my sight for a heartbeat, and I try to convince myself that I only need to wake up and I’ll be back on the Wild Ray, Ludelle’s arms around me. That he isn’t dead and I’m not Tavras’s tribute to the Crows. That this isn’t real. But night pushes the merciful sun over the edge of the world, and I find myself staring the Crow King in the eye.
My body goes cold as ice as he shifts in his chair and his features melt into those of a male. A stunningly handsome male, were it not for those eyes with not even a circle of white around the depthless black reminding me of Eroth’s Veil. A slightly hooked nose and sharply angled cheekbones complement the full mouth, which is set in a grim curve as he studies me across the table. His wings fold where normal arms would have an elbow as he gestures at the pitcher of wine in front of me, and no matter how eerie, they somehow complement his striking features.
“Please, help yourself.”
As if I could even think of drinking wine in the fairylands. What I once hoped to share with Ludelle has become a threat.
I shake my head.
“What? Not thirsty?” King Myron chuckles darkly as if this is his own personal joke. “Or hungry? I could swear I heard your stomach grumble all the way through the palace earlier.”
Could he? Guardians beware. If he has hearing like that?—
“Don’t worry, human bride. I can’t hear that.” He leans in just enough to make the fairy lights above us throw shadows of his long lashes onto his cheeks. Even from this distance, his eyes seem to swallow the world. “But I can hear your heartbeat right now, and it’s telling me you are afraid.”
He is not wrong, so I don’t say anything. I don’t pour myself the luxurious, crimson wine either.
